Matters of Trust
by Daystar Searcher
Summary: The obligatory post-Frame fic, a.k.a my angst fix when the 8th season got delayed. Finally COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: PG-13 for language and bloody imagery. Rating may go up in later chapters. Spoilers for…well, a lot of stuff probably, but mostly the sixth and seventh seasons. Definitely 'Blind Spot,' 'Endgame,' 'Untethered,' 'Purgatory,' 'Vanishing Act,' and 'Frame.'**

**Eames: So, what's with this new case?**

**Goren: Oh, apparently some geeky college student with no social life or the skills to obtain one has put out a hit on USA Network for delaying our Season 8 episodes until summer 2009.**

**Eames: How much of a threat is she?**

**Goren: Not much at all. She doesn't have any money to actually make the hit go through, so she'll probably just spend the next few months stewing in her own impotence and writing ridiculously angsty fanfiction.**

**Eames: Should we bring her in for copyright violation, just in case?**

**Goren: Nah. It's not like she's making any money or claiming credit for us or anything. Besides, from what I've been reading of her reactions to the show, I don't think I want her anywhere near us.**

**Eames: (reading over his shoulder) "The most amazingly delicious-looking Amazonian killer goddess biceps EVER"…okay, I'm officially creeped out.**

**Goren: Yeah, that one is worse than "smoldering dark chocolate eyes composed of sexy at a molecular level."**

**Eames: (still reading) "Emotion-porn?!" Our show is not emotion-porn!**

**Goren: You know, maybe we should carry out the hit ourselves. It might keep her from writing anything more.**

**Eames: Good idea.**

**A/N: So every time I watch the classic "It's--it's about yearning. He--he misses his partner" scene in F.P.S., I yell at the TV screen, "Aaaah! It's the Attack of the Incredibly Unsubtle Subtext!" (Also, every time I watch the beginning of Blind Spot where Goren is interrogating the first suspect and says something about how scary it is when the people you love go away, I yell "FORESHADOWING!!!" And whenever Stoat and Milago show up onscreen in Purgatory I yell, "Noooo! Not Evil Alternate Universe Goren and Eames!" Yeah, I'm pretty sure my entire dorm thinks I'm insane.) Anyway, getting back to the point, the first chapter of this story utilizes an incredibly unsubtle metaphor. Fell free to yell "Aaaah! It's the Attack of the Incredibly Unsubtle Metaphor!" at your computer screen.**

When Alex was seven, she broke her mother's favorite vase.

No one else was home, and she had been bouncing a ball off the ceiling. She remembers liking the sound, _ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk, _how it set a rhythm for her thoughts: _I-wonder if-they'll let-me play-ball with-them la-ter--_

And then the ball hit the ceiling at a weird angle and instead of leaping back into her hand it slammed into the vase, a sickening crunchsmashshatter like bones snapping and ice splintering and the whole world coming to an end.

And she remembers feeling the panic the fear the _oh no oh no oh no please I didn't mean to I'm sorry I'm so sorry please I'm sorry _the sheer absolute freezing terror the way only little children can feel, how all the horrible little smashed pieces (so many pieces so many pieces how could there be that many pieces of anything in the whole universe) filled up her vision and her head. But she had to try to fix it anyway, and she tried, she tried so hard, and she remembers her fingers sticky with Elmer's Glue and blood because all the stupid little pieces keep cutting her fingers and they stick to her fingers but they won't stick to each other and the tape is useless and it sticks to her but not to the pieces either and she is trying to hold it all together and fit it all together, but the vase won't stick and stay together and _she _won't stick and stay together and her breaths are coming in and out all hitching and raggedy and _she can't breathe can't breathe _and there is that little tickling feeling in her nose that comes with the floods pressing against the back of her eyeballs and she is going to cry like the stupid clumsy little baby that she is and Mommy is going to be so mad and Daddy is going to be so mad and today was such a perfect day and her brothers were going to play ball with her but now everything is ruined ruined ruined--

In the hour before her family gets home, Alex does not stop trying to hold the vase together. But it is completely broken, and cannot be fixed.

They throw it away.

xxxxx

When Bobby was nine his father came home loud and angry and smelling like whiskey and cigarette smoke and something sickly sweet and wrong, and started yelling and smashing everything within reach. Bobby tried to save his mother's favorite vase, grabbed it and tucked it under his shirt and ran.

But he trips going up the stairs, lands on his chest. Smash! And pain and little pinpricks of blood coming through his shirt, and his father yanking him to his feet _you stupid little shit what the hell are you doing?_

And his mother, standing in front of him, her face cold and distant as the Arctic tundra. He'd only wanted to help her.

But he'd ruined everything.

xxxxx

The instant Goren's betrayal becomes clear to Eames she remembers her mother's vase, remembers it in perfect before-and-after detail, crystal-clear recall of the instant its delicate blue and white pattern crumbled into shards and dust, because she's pretty sure it's shattering all over again, only inside her this time. An explosion. All those sharp little fragments piercing straight through every internal organ, slicing up her insides into a bloody soup and punching themselves deep in the underside of the skin so that even the glare of the fluorescent lights and even--no, especially--the touch of Bobby's eyes makes her want to scream and how is she still standing with the pain stabbing again and again through every part of her that can feel? How is she still breathing with the ceramic dust clogging her lungs, mixing with the tears that _she is not going to fucking cry, dammit_ and becoming clay that blocks up her throat and leaves a sick taste in the back of her mouth?

And some part of Eames that is very far away right now knows that Bobby is trying to make it better with his words, but the damage he's done can't be repaired with a pickaxe. _And he doesn't even understand. _He sees that she's angry and he sees that she's hurt but he doesn't see what he's done after all she's done for him and how tired she is after all she's had to do for him but she did it because he's her goddamn partner and that's supposed to mean something _and how the fuck dare he _think he can fix this with an "I'm sorry" and have everything be okay again?

She's home and washing dishes and every single cell of her already hurts so fucking much that it's not till the water turns red that she realizes her steak knife's sliced open her palm.

xxxxx

Her parents threw away the vase and her mom wiped Alex's face clean and fussed over her bloody fingers and told Alex that of course she wasn't angry, that she had liked the vase very much but not enough for Alex to get so worked up over it and most definitely not enough for Alex to go hurting herself over it. And eventually Alex's sobbing turned into wet hiccups and her mother gave her some ice cream. And even later that night when Alex lay in bed she couldn't believe, couldn't wrap her head around the fact that the world hadn't ended. That everything was going to be okay and that life was going on. But at the same time everything wasn't okay, not to her, because--because--

Because there had been something beautiful and fragile and right, and now it wouldn't be there anymore. And even if her parents weren't angry it didn't seem right that something so perfect had been destroyed.

When she was still wide awake at midnight, she tiptoed down to the trash and took out the plastic bag her father had swept the pieces into and hid it in her closet. That was a little better, at least.

But she still didn't know how to put it back together.

xxxxx

Bobby tries to put it back together.

He does it quietly, because all his words are gone. They have deserted him, abandoned him, left him alone like everything else in his life and _please please please not Eames too not her. _Sometimes he thinks he has them back and he tries to speak, to say the right thing (_You're right. You're--you're right_) but the look she gives him--it freezes the rest of them in his throat and he chokes on them, tasting their inadequacy. His inadequacy. It tastes like blood and stale air and hospital rooms and the ashes his useless words have crumbled into.

So he does it quietly, almost silently, and so much of it, of fitting the broken pieces of their partnership back together, so much of it is waiting and he was never very good at that but he has to be this time because this is the most important thing he has ever waited for. So he is quiet and he waits and holds the little pieces together, one at a time, waiting for the glue to dry and for Goren and Eames to be whole again.

xxxxx

Bobby hovers, so quiet, but still she can _hear _him thinking at her, broadcasting downtrodden repentance on every channel: _I'm sorry I'm sorry please I didn't think please I didn't mean to hurt you I'm so sorry _and she can feel him, the barely suspended weight of his body and his gaze, hopes and fears coiled and ready to pounce on the smallest sign of forgiveness. He hovers behind her and she's glad he hovers behind her because it makes it easy not to look at him and she's afraid to look at him. Partly because every time she does the shards dig themselves deeper, and partly because he might see exactly how deeply he's cut her and file it away for future use.

And partly because she's afraid that if she looks him in the eyes, and he looks back, she might forgive him.

xxxxx

Eames forgives him.

She looks him in the eye, and he looks back, and in the time it takes to process that this case has definitely unlocked his inner five-year-old, she forgives him.

They've put themselves back together, somehow, and even if the cracks show and you can trace the fault lines with the tip of your fingernail, even if in places the edges don't quite match up and the surface is uneven, even if there are chips here and there that will never be the same--despite all this, they are whole. She is still mad at him, but no matter what anyone says--and Eames privately resolves to stick Dean Holiday, the slime-ball, in a _really _uncomfortable holding cell for his manipulations and insinuations--they are one again, and workable.

Maybe even still beautiful.

The case ends on less of a good note than it started, quieter, more awkward. Fewer smiles. Bobby is twitchy on the ride back, but it's anxious-twitchy, not playful-twitchy like before, and even though she's watching the road she's so acutely aware of it that her joints tense and pop in sympathy.

"Hey, Eames." She glances at him, and his fingers flash forward, snap by her ear, and are suddenly holding a quarter. He smiles, a nervous little half-smile fidgetting on his lips like it's afraid to hold still. "Abra--abra cadabra."

"The Incredible Goren, Available for One Night Only," she says dryly, plucking the quarter from his hand. And she gives him one last smile for the night, just to let him know:

_So we're not okay yet. So what._

_We will be._

xxxxx

They will be okay. They're clicking back together, finishing each other's thoughts again, sharing thoughts without words again. And they're not all the way there yet, but they're so close Bobby can almost taste it, and it tastes like hazelnuts and mocha and Skittles and blue sky.

Eames is coming back to him and his words are coming back to him and he wants to spin in circles or dance or jump up and down, but he might just faint from the relief and from the fear that it won't last.

That night after they close the Miles Stone case he can't sleep with being so lit up with feeling the closeness of it and the terror of losing it now that it's almost his, so he stays up and does magic tricks and replays each and every time Eames smiled at him, each time she laughed, the way her hand came up to cover her mouth and the corners of her eyes crinkled, and he grins like an idiot with each replay. And he replays the bad stuff too, because he can't help it and also because he wants to keep it from happening ever again. The sudden awkwardness, the quiet that enveloped them after the perp read Eames. _He's betrayed you before, hasn't he? You poor thing… _And he wants to call Eames up and say that he's sorry over and over again until she says out loud that she does forgive him and he almost picks up the phone before he remembers that it's three a.m. and that even before everything went to hell in a hand-basket the early hours of the morning were not a time conducive to procuring anything from Eames besides copious amounts of profanity and sarcasm. And that thought makes him grin like an idiot too.

Basically, in fact, he's just an idiot.

Well, as long as he's an idiot with a partner again.

He'll bring her coffee the next day. He hasn't done that for awhile.

They'll fit back together. They'll make it right.

xxxxx

After Declan Gage is led away, Ross almost goes into the interrogation room but Eames stops him with a look that is not quite a glare but that plainly says: _Mine. Back off._

Ross goes to his office.

Bobby is hunched over the table. He doesn't move when she enters.

Everything inside him is shattered.

Eames stands by the door for a few seconds. She almost leaves. He's pushed her away before. Maybe he doesn't want her here.

Bobby's head sinks a little lower in his hands.

She moves to stand behind him. Leans down and wraps her arms tight around his frame. Tucks her head just above his shoulder, presses the side of her face into his neck. Holds all the pieces together. He lets her.

They stay that way for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note/The Continued Adventures of the Disclaiming Duo:**

_**Setting, a Megabus (trying to save on gas money). Goren and Eames sit next to each other (well, duh). Eames is glaring at her laptop's screen.**_

**Eames: I cannot believe she made us hug. We never hug.**

**Goren: Well, maybe we would be more well-adjusted if we did.**

**Eames: Speak for yourself, Angst-Boy. I am perfectly well-adjusted, thank you very much. **_**(pause)**_** So, when we get there should I just shoot the network executives in the face right away, or do you want to interrogate them first?**

**Goren: Oooooh, interrogation!**

**Eames: I'll just put that in the itinerary, then.**

**Goren: Hey, Eames, how are you even managing to get an Internet connection?**

**Eames: It's called a plot device, Bobby, deal with--oh, *shit.***

**Goren: What?**

**Eames: I hacked into her Facebook account to see if we could get a clue about what else is in store for us and I found this meme: Top Five Favorite Fanfiction Cliches. **

**Goren: Oh no, are you getting raped? Or am I going to go insane? Or--oh no, she wouldn't--she--she's not having one of us mercilessly gunned down while the blood-spattered survivor sinks to his or her knees and screams their infinite rage and pain into the uncaring night sky, is she?**

**Eames: Worse. Judging by the fact that it shows up in every single one of these clichés, it looks like there's a strong chance of…of…*****cuddling.***

They don't speak during the drive to Bobby's apartment. The world has changed size and shape somehow, shifted in the color spectrum too, and their minds have been jolted loose and now hover just above the edge of it, uncertain how to communicate in this parallel universe where so many completely impossible things can happen to the same person one right after the other.

Bobby clenches his body still in the seat. If he moves his head will explode.

Eames parks the SUV and they both sit there silently for a minute, staring straight ahead.

"Thanks for the ride." Bobby hears his voice arrive from somewhere deep inside his stomach and a million miles away.

He gets out. Eames gets out too and follows him up to his apartment and Bobby doesn't say anything because maybe in this strange new dimension this is a thing that Eames does.

He unlocks the door and they walk in. Neither turns on the lights.

Again there is stillness, and not fitting, and their separate bodies make stark black outlines in the semi-darkness. He wants to look into her eyes, needs to look into her eyes, if he doesn't he is going to spontaneously combust but if he looks into her eyes he'll see the way she sees him now--

Her hand slips into his. That fits.

She turns him, pulls him to her like she did in the interrogation room but standing and facing him this time, and she is so soft and warm and small and he feels his arms rise up and go around her, and her head drops all nicebelongingrightperfect against his chest--

_Victim was bent over the sink and held still, vaginally penetrated pre-mortem, strangled and penetrated again post-mortem--_

He wrenches away from Alex, the movement harsh and sudden, and she can't stop a gasp, which to him confirms every bleak suspicion currently racing through his brain. Her face is masked by the dark but the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders make her outline a question mark.

"You--you should go," he says, the words tripping out of his mouth. "I'm not--I'm--you should--"

Her fingers come up to still his lips, and he jerks backwards again, out of reach. "You know what I am!"

"You're my _partner,_" she says, the way she has always said it, exasperated and with the sentence stress on the last word like those two syllables are supposed to be enough to explain everything that could ever need to be explained.

More stillness. Silence. Not fitting. It's becoming a theme with them.

Then Eames takes his hand again, firmly this time so he can't pull away without knocking her down, and leads him into the bedroom. Sits him down on the edge of the mattress.

He closes his eyes and smells coffee and cinnamon and the supposedly unscented lotion she rubs on her elbows. When he opens them, she is unbuttoning her blouse.

"Eames, I don't think--I, I, this--"

"Relax, Bobby," she says, and there's enough light that he can see her smirk. "I know you don't go for bite-size snacks."

He can only gape in confusion.

"I'm not jumping your bones," she clarifies. She shrugs the white shirt off her shoulders and folds it neatly. Her bra is Spartan, and an ivory only a few shades lighter than her newly uncovered alabaster skin. "You should get changed for bed. Unless you want to sleep in your clothes." She kicks off her shoes, peels off her socks.

"C-can you tell me exactly…what you _are_ doing?"

"At the moment, taking my pants off."

"_Eames_--"

The barely contained panic in his voice makes her stop unbuckling her belt, and she sits on the bed next to him. "Sorry," she says quietly. "I didn't mean to be--flippant, about this."

He is trying very hard not to flinch away from her. _Victim was tricked into entering the basement, where she was severely beaten with a lead pipe before being anally raped and strangled to death. _"And… 'this' is…?"

She takes a deep breath. "After the whole thing with--with Stoat and Testarossa, when I wasn't talking to you--I had a lot of time to think. And I thought about you. And I realized that of all the things that hurt, the worst thing was that--that you didn't trust me enough to tell me what you were doing. Even the fact that I almost ended up shooting your head off--" she swallows convulsively but she keeps looking directly into his face. "Even that consequence didn't hurt as much as the core fact you didn't think you could tell me, or should tell me--"

"I trusted you," he interrupts because her eyes are wide and shining wetly on the verge of actual tears, and if he makes her cry today on top of everything else he will have to go jump off a motherfucking bridge--_if I heard you were on a bridge, I'd listen for the splash_--"There was never, ever, a, a, a time when I didn't trust you--"

"I'm just saying what it felt like." And those words and the look on her face when she says them, lost and alone and cold in the chill of his bedroom, kills every word he could ever say for the rest of his life.

She touches his arm and it burns him like a brand.

"I don't want you to feel that way." Eames stands, slides off her pants. "You need to know that I trust you."

"I--I know."

"No, you don't." She steps back towards him. Her hand traces his shoulder. "Bobby, I swear I never thought that--I was just trying to clear you--" she stops, and he can feel the frustration coming off her in waves, her anger at the words that will not behave for her. "I need to show you."

"Show me…?"

"People are vulnerable when they sleep," Eames says. She tries not to cross her arms. Why is this so hard to explain? "Sleeping with someone--literally, not figuratively--alone, in the dark, practically naked--it means something more than sex. It means trust and closeness and…and that you know the person through and through and you know that--they'd never hurt you."

Bobby feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of his lungs. _The victim probably knew and trusted the killer, making it easy for him to lure her to the deserted building where he bent her over a table, choking her to death as he raped her. "_Eames, you don't know that, you can't know that, after--"

"I know it." Her voice is steel and unyielding. "I know it more than I've ever fucking known anything, Bobby, I--" the steel cracks. "Please let me do this."

"I'm Mark Ford Brady's--"

"You are _nothing _of his." Eames cups his face in her hands and he's not sure if she's trying to comfort him or crush his skull.

"G-genetics don't lie--"

"_Nothing_," she repeats. "He is nothing of yours and you are nothing of his."

Time doesn't move. There's just her eyes, honey and gold, and they're the only thing in his whole life he has left to hold on to.

"What…what am I, then?" he whispers. Because he needs to know.

She smiles, watery but genuine. "You're my _partner_."

And in this parallel dimension they've tumbled down the rabbit hole into, the only thing left for Bobby to do is pull back the covers.

He lies down next to her and she interlaces her fingers with his, pulls his arm around her waist so that they are spooning. His legs resting behind hers, his lips almost in her hair. She closes her eyes and relaxes into him, her body soft and loose, her breathing steady. Her skin warm and soft and smelling of cinnamon and coffee and unscented lotion.

_Victim was--_

"Is--is this…okay?"

She snuggles even closer. Runs her thumb over the top of his hand. "Yeah."

She is so goddamn _small_ next to him and he doesn't know why but that thought makes him want to cry with how terrified and grateful and lonely and happy he feels all at the same time.

He shifts a little to lie with his ear against her neck, because he knows that without the sound of her pulse he will be unable to ward off the nightmares that he has killed her.


	3. Chapter 3

**So Basically at This Point You're Getting Two Stories for the Price of One: **

_**Still onboard the Megabus, Goren and Eames are staring at the laptop screen in shock and horror.**_

**Eames: Just so we're clear, that cuddling thing? Never gonna happen.**

**Goren: Good, 'cause lying with my ear on your neck just doesn't sound like a very comfortable sleeping position at all. **

**Eames: And, if, through some freakish rip in the fabric of time and space, it does happen, and I get even the slightest hint that you're internally narrating that tender moment with crime scene reports, I will beat you senseless.**

**Goren: Yeah, that was just unnecessarily maudlin of her. How can one person generate that much angst and not explode?**

**Eames: …Actually, I wonder that about you all the time.**

**Goren: Well, I salve my pain with the knowledge that I have literally millions of rabid fangirls standing ready to sweep me off my feet and take me away from it all. **_**(pause) **_**Of course, then I remember that some of them stupidly consider you part of the 'it all' I need to be taken away from, and the thought of going on without you is like a double angstburger and a large angst-shake drizzled with hot angst sauce, plus an extra heaping helping of angst fries.**

**Eames: That's…sweet. I think.**

**Goren: I guess I should've gotten something to eat at that last stop.**

**Eames: Have some Skittles.**

**Goren: Thanks. Hey, isn't it kind of clichéd for you to be eating Skittles?**

**Eames: I can always take them back, Angst-Boy.**

**Goren: On second thought, you eating Skittles is just excellent characterization.**

**Eames: Damn right.**

He can't sleep. Sleep is a dubious proposition for him at the best of times, and now is definitely not the best of times.

Except it sort of is, he thinks as Eames murmurs something indistinguishable and nestles back into him. It's sort of a miracle, really. And he hates himself a little for thinking that, and for noticing all the textures, the softness of her skin and the hardness of her muscles and the silkiness of her hair.

And they're a betrayal, these thoughts, of Eames' trust, that blind and burning faith that led her to do this, and there have been too many betrayals of that trust already. So he shoves them away and tries to just watch her, watch over her, tries not to have any thoughts at all.

Why hasn't Alex Eames taken one good look at what he's become and realized what he's probably been all along? She should have run, she should've turned and fucking _galloped_ from him the first time he hurt her—no, before that, and in any case she should leave now, before he hurts her even more, before he—

It's midnight when Eames stirs in his arms. Keeping her eyes closed she stretches slightly, pops her shoulders. She burrows her face into the pillow and gives a little moan, somewhere between accusatory and amused. "I can hear you thinking, Goren."

"Oh. Sorry."

"You think very loudly." Her voice is fuzzy and warm, drunk with the memory of sleep. "Some…" she yawns, a hint of a smile peeking around the edges of her lips and still-shut eyes, like a secret she might share. "Some might say exceedingly so."

"I—didn't mean to wake you up. You should try to get some rest."

"Mmm." Her fingers, which had slipped from his, find them again and pull his arm a little closer around her. "Penny for 'em?"

"They weren't—they were just—you know…stuff."

"Stuff."

"Yeah. Late-night…stuff."

"Yeah?" That flicker of a smile disappears, and her eyes open. She clutches his hand a little tighter, her lips a fretting line as she stares into nothing. "Stuff, huh?"

"Yeah."

_Sorry, I know this is not the most eloquent and intellectually stimulating conversation we've ever had, _he wants to say to her, thinks saying that might make her laugh and he misses the regularity with which that he used to be able to do that, misses it with a sharp and sudden stabbing in his chest. But he can't predict her anymore. Can't predict anything. So they're quiet together for a moment, while all the things she could be saying—_Thanks for not leaving/Is this really helping or are you just being polite/Are you sure you don't want to talk about it—_fly through the air past all the things he could be saying, which is mostly the word 'sorry' repeated over and over.

Maybe if he starts now then by next year he'll have made a dent in the stack he owes her.

Their breaths mix in their bubble universe of the room as traffic rumbles through the city outside, truck lights glaring through the blinds and making shadows dance and grimace on the wall. She pops her joints again, and her bare shoulder crinkles his shirt, the cotton stroking his skin like a whisper.

She sighs and loosens her grip, and he is seized with the sudden irrational fear that she is loosening her grip on everything, that she will slide out of his bed and out of his life and dissolve into the shifting roiling mass of people outside his apartment, outside this safe little self-contained pocket in the fabric of time and space where there's only him and her and the shape their bodies make together and the sound of their breaths mingling

"About…work, tomorrow—" he starts.

She cuts him off. "Ross texted me on the way home. He said that he's assuming we both applied for a week of paid leave before we left and that he misplaced the paperwork, forcing him to rewrite it out himself. He made a point of stressing that it was an assumption we would be wise not to question."

"Both of us…"

"I think he's finally figured out that we…don't do very well on our own."

"You do just fine—"

"Bobby, I don't. I—really don't." Did her voice just waver? Her spine has stiffened against him. "I—God, Bobby, I was such a pain in the ass when you were on suspension. I snapped at people for no reason, I ignored my friends, whenever I had to work with someone else I just shut them out, I—" she swallows, reining herself in. "You're not the only one who needs this, you know."

She keeps doing this tonight, finding just the right combination of things to do or say to punch him in the gut and jerk the air from him and leave him dazed and awed and aching and terrified. And since all his words are gone the only thing he can do is squeeze her hand, plant a clumsy kiss on her cheek and tuck his chin over her shoulder and hope to God, heart slamming against his ribcage, that she understands what he's trying to say.

She squeezes his hand back, and it's a _thank you _and an _it's okay_, and it's another crystal perfect moment in a day, a week, hell, a lifetime of sitting alone and waiting for moments just like this and he wishes it didn't have to ever end. So he takes a deep breath and plunges in.

"I was thinking, before…I was thinking a lot of things, but I was thinking—we don't touch."

She snorts. "The current evidence would seem to directly contradict your theory, Detective."

"I just—I mean, most of the time. Normally. We…don't."

"Yeah." She bites her lip. "Does that bother you?"

"I always felt like…we were close enough that talking—was enough."

"Oh." Her brow furrows. "Is this bothering you? I mean, now, is this making you uncomfortable?"

"No! I—I like this. I…really like this."

"Oh. Good."

He realizes suddenly that he's been stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, dipping and looping it around her knuckles, sliding it down her wrist. How long has he been doing that?

"Just the last couple of minutes."

He starts, and there's that smirk he can't get enough of, gleeful and wicked as a dirty joke. "You're not the only one who can read body language, Goren."

"Yeah, but…you're not even facing me."

"Your thumb faltered," she says, like it's the most natural thing in the world for her to be able to read his mind from that one gesture. Like she's not a genius.

"You're not my water-carrier," he says suddenly. "You're not. You're smart and, and you're strong, and I need you—so much, so so much and I, I, I should've told you that. I should've. A long time ago…I should've said." And he squeezes his eyes shut because he's pretty sure he's said too much and all the wrong things besides.

And Eames is suddenly having a lot of trouble breathing normally and oh god, how fucking embarrassing is it that she's going to fucking cry, she's turning into a fucking Lifetime Original Movie is what she's doing here—she coughs to try to cover her sniffle. "Damn, Goren," she says, and she's proud of the way her voice is almost completely steady, "I should cuddle up to you half-naked _way_ more often."

"That's not why I'm saying it!" he protests, panicking, and she rolls her eyes at how goddamned literal he's always been, but she smiles too and squeezes his hand. "Joke, Bobby. Joke."

And he tries to calm down, he really does, but there are all these things he's thinking that he shouldn't be, and he still doesn't know what the new rules are in this universe, and he's so fucking _scared _of screwing it all up—

"Hey." And now her thumb is mirroring his. "Have you slept at all?"

"N-no. No." He wants to say that he can't sleep with the radio talk show in his brain: _The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Suspect is charming and handsome, and probably used his photography business to select his victims and lure them to isolated locations. Back off. Detective Goren's erratic and antisocial behavior, his volatile and bizarre interrogation techniques—_

"Well, I'm sure Discovery Channel has something absolutely _fascinating_ on," Eames says, but with no bite, the mocking softened with affection, concern. "We could take a blanket, move this show to the couch."

"I—don't have a TV anymore," he says, trying to focus. "Sold it. You know. You—saw the record of sale."

And just like that, it's back to being completely awkward and horrible on both their parts.

He wants to apologize, he wants to explain, he wants to say something, anything, but his words are all dust in his mouth again.

Alex turns in his arms, faces him. Her free hand reaches up to trace the outline of his face, make him look her in the eyes. They are liquid and confused and filled with sadness and something else that he suspects the English language will never have an exact word for. "Bobby…I swear to God I was just trying to clear you. I knew you didn't kill Frank or Nicole—"

And he's shaking his head, because she's wrong, all wrong. "You couldn't have known—you can't know—you can't!" And because he can't look in her eyes and see how wet they are and look down at her and see how small and helpless and exposed she looks right there lying next to him, trusting him, stupidstupidstupid to trust him, he flips over to his other side. "There have been studies, genetics, violent tendencies are passed down and even if they weren't it wasn't like my other role models—" and he laughs and it's hard and ugly and fucking painful jerking out of his throat—"were, were exactly…Boy Scouts—"

"_You're not them."_ And she's the one spooning him now, and she's gripping him like a life preserver which is fucking ridiculous because all he's ever brought anyone who's cared about him is death.

"I saw how Brady looked at you," he whispers. "When we interrogated him, I saw how he…looked at you, I knew…he wanted you, I knew what he…wanted to do with you—what he would've done if…he could've—" and everything in the world is freezing except for Alex pressed behind him who is scalding hot and all the colors are wrong and every word cuts him and he is falling—"and I have _that_ inside me, I have something _inside_ me that would want to—to hurt you…"

She trembles behind him, and he thinks that this is it, that she finally gets it, but then he's on his back and she's pressing him down and her hands are cupping his face and doing that comforting/crushing thing again and oh God she's crying he's never seen her actually cry before, the tears streaking streaming down her face. She's crying and she's kissing him everywhere on his face, his forehead his nose his eyelids his temple his chin his cheeks, pressing her lips hard to his skin again and again and again, fast and desperate and fierce and unyielding. And he's so distracted by the sensations _(softhardwet)_ and the thoughts _(EamesEamesEames) _and the way that the whole universe officially now consists of her and only her, that it takes a few seconds to realize that she's speaking between the kisses, the same four words over and over:

"You are not them YouarenotthemYouarenotthem_Youarenotthem_—"

And he knows he should do something but he doesn't know what to do and he just lies there stunned beneath the machine-gun assault of her kisses, and he touches her shoulders, tries to soothe her, tell her with his hands _ohEamesmyEamesEamesEames _and he's not even sure what that means but it's the closest thing to a coherent thought his brain can manage right now.

The words start to sound like they hurt coming out of her, like they're scraping her inside, and it shatters him and he puts a finger to her lips _(softwarm)_ and just like that she stops. Blinks. Gives a hiccuppy little laugh, watery and dangerously close to a sob. Rests her forehead against his. "God, we're fucked up, aren't we?"

"Yeah. But we're…us."

It's closer to a real laugh this time. "Yeah…yeah, we are."

She settles down onto his body, her slight frame draped over his like an extra blanket, a shield. His protector.

And there's so much he wants to say but he settles for, "You're a Valkyrie, Eames. But…better."

He feels the smile against his neck. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

He closes his eyes, wraps his arms around her. Breathes in coffee. Cinnamon.

Unscented lotion.

Pulls the real blanket up higher so she won't be cold during the rest of the long, dark night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Meanwhile, Aboard the Megabus:**

**Eames: Oh, hell no! **

**Goren: The Valkyrie metaphor isn't *that* bad—wait, you…you aren't reading her story 'Maggots, Vermin, Ashes, Dust,' are you?**

**Eames: Some reason why I shouldn't?**

**Goren: Umm…no.**

**Eames: Oookay…anyway, I was talking about this e-mail I just got. **_**(reads off laptop screen) **_**"Hey, guys, the show's returning April 19th (woohoo!) so you need to get your extremely attractive asses back to NYC in time for the season premiere." Goddamnit! I swear this girl enjoys torturing us.**

**Goren: Oh, so you *have* read 'Maggots, Vermin, Ashes, Dust!'**

**Eames: What?**

**Goren: Umm…never mind. Hey, excuse me, driver!**

**Megabus Driver: **_**(turns around, sighs)**_**What undoubtedly outlandish request do you require me to accommodate, detectives?**

**Both: **_**CARVER?!?**_

**Carver: What did you think I did after leaving the show?**

They fall into a strange and delicate pattern, like leaves twirling on the surface of a lake, each twitch and spin testing the surface tension of the water, knowing that to push just a fraction too hard could send them plummeting to dark and icy depths. So they just skim, circling each other, the fragile, dead-leaf brittle edges of their souls brushing as they pass quickly, fleetingly. More than they know they should risk, but less than they desire.

Circle around and begin again.

Mornings are lazy, slurred words and rumpled blankets. Warmth and softness and bodies curled together with eyes closed like puppies in a basket, and Eames thinks with amusement that they sound like puppies too, snorting and snuffling and moaning as they tangle their limbs and Bobby buries his face in the crook of her neck and they try to steal one more moment from the sun climbing high in the window and pulling the rest of the world with it.

Breakfast is mostly silent, punctuated by the rustling of newspaper and the slurping of coffee and other morning minutiae. Afterwards he washes the dishes as she dresses, and when he's wiping down the table she wraps her arms tight around him and leans against his back, hands pressing still but fervent on his chest.

He traces her fingers with his own until she pulls away, and when he turns around she is slipping out the door, head ducked and hair hiding her face.

During the daytime they go their separate ways, but at nine o'clock sharp she's knocking on his door. He offers her a snack, a beer. She makes herself at home on the couch, feet tucked under her—"it's a short person thing"—and leans back, not quite against his shoulder, sniping at whatever National Geographic Special Edition or History Channel Exclusive DVD he's got playing on his laptop that evening.

At some point there's yawning, and then brushing of teeth, and then stripping down to their underwear and crawling into bed where they squirm into a comfortable position and Alex conks out within the first five minutes of nestling into him and it's all so nice and normal and domestic that Bobby could weep with how completely impossible it is that this is happening.

Around midnight she is awakened by something—the rigidity of his spine? the tightness with which he clutches her? the screaming siren of his brain bursting through his skull as he tries to unravel the entire world by himself?—and she lies with him in the alien landscape of the night, navigating its incomprehensible waves of shadow and sound. And in the unknowable turbulent ocean in which they're spinning unmoored their only surety is that of the calluses they can feel on each other's hands, and the slight burn of his stubble on her shoulder, and the way their lips caress the witching hour air, stroking and rolling it into simple English syllables, strung together like plain beads on a necklace:

_That's nice._

_So what'd you do today?_

_Have you heard from Logan?_

_Mmmm._

_Would you like toast for breakfast tomorrow?_

Magic.

Eventually she feels his body grow looser and heavier, slump more into her. His breathing and heartbeat slow, and sometimes he tries to mumble just one last fact about Dutch Batavian tattoos or giant squid feeding patterns or whatever before it's lights out and his head drops, lips colliding with her ear. Not long after, she drifts off as well.

In the morning, it's circle around and begin again.

xxxxx

"What do you think about when I'm sleeping?" she asks on the sixth night.

"Sometimes I think about, I try to decide—it's kind of like a game…Best and Worst."

xxxxx

_The worst part of the first day was how quickly Eames dressed, pantssocksshirtshoes, like it was a race. Gulping down her coffee, running her hands through her hair._

"_It's my day with my nephew," she explained, already halfway out the door. And he just nodded, because anything out of his mouth at that point would be even more childish and selfish than this silent treatment thing he was doing. Which she was in too much of a rush to notice._

"_See you later!" she said, and was gone._

_The best part was how he actually did see her later. Or rather, sooner. He had interpreted "See you later" as something along the lines of "I'm incredibly embarrassed about all of this so I'll call you sometime this weekend and we'll inch around making plans to meet but just end up seeing each other back at work where we will both forget all about the half-naked cuddling incident if you want to retain certain crucial parts of your anatomy."_

_Which was admittedly a lot of subtext to cram into three words. But Eames was a woman of many skills. And Bobby, well, Bobby…_

…overanalyzes things way, way too much,_ he thought when he answered the door at nine p.m. to find Eames bearing an overnight bag and a handful of DVDs._

"_My sister swore these were can't-miss, but then again she shares your belief that artistic equals naked sweaty people, so…"_

"_You—you…came back."_

"_Well, yeah. Didn't you—" And then she really did look embarrassed, dipped her head to swing a wild-honey blonde curtain across her face as she pushed past him. _

"_You make really good morning coffee," she muttered._

_And that was the very, very best part of all. _

xxxxx

"What about you?"

"My Best and Worst?"

"Yeah."

"Best: helping my nephew color in his new coloring book. Worst…actually, it was a pretty great day. All around. Maybe that panicky face you made when I said you could sleep in your underwear too if you wanted. Looked like you were going to make a run for it."

"I wasn't! It was—just kind of out of the blue."

She snorts. "I thought I was going to have to break out the smelling salts."

"What about the second day?"

"My Best and Worst?"

"Yeah."

xxxxx

_The best part of the second day was almost the discussion about her name:_

"'_Eames' is…is sort of plain and basic but filling, like…like bread, really good bread that's hand-kneaded and baked in a brick oven like it's supposed to be—"_

_She rolled her eyes, taking another swig from her beer bottle. They were both slightly tipsy, trying to unwind after the whole fiasco that afternoon when the lieutenant had had to call her because—no, not going to think about that now. She focused instead on Goren's slightly loopy soliloquy on the gastronomical similes applicable to her name._

"_And bread is, is comfortable. Comforting. It's a staple, you, you eat it every day, it's a part of—every meal. In the European and American cultures anyway. But in every society there's some sort of grain-based foodstuff, whether from wheat or corn or rice or couscous or—"_

"_Focus," she interrupted, because even silly, drunk, gesturing-even-more-grandly-than-usual Goren couldn't make a lecture on the grains of the world interesting._

"_Right," he said, very earnestly. "So 'Eames' is comfortable, like bread, and reassuring, because it's always there and it's, it's, it's _bread_, you know? Home. And family, and…and… 'Alex' is, is like this really expensive chocolate with a mint center that you got in—Belgium, or, or somewhere. And you're pretty sure that there aren't any more left, or being made, so…you, you want to save it. For something special or important, and even then you just sort of—you know, nibble at it—"_

_The visual of Goren nibbling at a word struck Eames as both hilarious and apt, and Bobby frowned at her as he waited for her snickers to subside._

"_Because—because you know that once it's all gone, you'll…probably never get to say it again," he finished lamely._

_There were more concise and logical ways that Bobby Goren could have explained why he'd only ever called his partner of eight years by her first name twice. But somehow, Eames thought this one made the most sense._

_Possibly because she was drunk._

_But really, the best part came a few hours before that, right after he had apologized for punching a dent in her car in frustration when she came to pick him up after—after the thing she was definitely not going to talk about._

_He'd looked at her, his pleading eyes wet and lost, and asked in that voice that cut his height in half, "C-can we go_ home_, please?"_

xxxxx

"I—I promise, I am going to pay for that dent."

_With what? _Eames doesn't say. Instead she shakes her head. "I said not to worry about it."

"I was just—I thought it was Donny, the r—report sounded just like him, and then they wouldn't let me see the body and I thought—"

She squeezes his hand, presses it to her lips. "I know, Bobby."

Silence. His breath on the back of her head is hot, and flicks strands of her hair forward to tickle her nose.

"…Eames?"

"Yeah?"

"When you're sleeping, before, do you dream?"

"Sometimes."

"What about?"

"Nothing much."

xxxxx

_On the third night Eames had a dream that she was in the morgue trying to apologize to Rodgers for Goren's behavior. And Rodgers is cold and angry and in no hurry to absolve him and finally asks, "And why isn't he here himself, Detective?"_

"_He's broken."_

"_So fix him."_

_And then Rodgers leaves and locks the door and suddenly Bobby is in there with her and they're both naked on the steel table and Alex realizes that she has to have sex with Bobby so he can go apologize to Rodgers. It's common sense, really. So they do._

xxxxx

"What about you?"

"Dreams?"

"Yeah."

"I…don't usually remember them."

xxxxx

_On the fourth night Bobby had a dream that they're back interrogating Mark Ford Brady again, except there's been a mistake because Bobby thought they were re-interviewing Henry Talbot and he based his whole strategy on that and Eames is alone in the room with Brady in that low-cut red tank top and she doesn't see Brady's hands coming closer and closer to her neck and Bobby can't make her hear him through the glass--_

xxxxx

"Eames?"

"Nibble off a piece of Belgian chocolate, Bobby."

"Alex?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for…for yesterday. Coming along."

"Thanks for inviting me."

xxxxx

_They go their separate ways during the daytime, this is the pattern. It is dangerous to deviate from patterns. _

_But on the fifth day, Bobby asked her if she has anything to do. Said, haltingly, that if she didn't, he could use some company looking for Donny._

_She was touched, to the point of wanting to say something like, "Thanks for letting me in" or "I'm glad you feel comfortable sharing this part of your life with me" or some other trite piece of crap that all of a sudden didn't seem quite so bad. _

_But she was Eames, so she said, "I'm driving the Mustang."_

_It wasn't a happy day, not really. It was constructed out of a mish-mash of awkward silences, it was windy and bleak and New York City seemed to be nothing but a churning mass of groaning, glitching cogs with a Donny-shaped hole. Bobby almost cried twice, and frankly, it was a welcome relief from the blank stone his face appeared to be carved of the rest of the time. At lunch, he ducked away early, and when he came back to the table the scent of cigarette smoke clung to him._

_Later he whirled to punch a shop window, and Eames reached up and caught his fist in her palm, slap! and it stung like hell, though not as bad as it could have because Goren saw her coming and tried to slow his arm._

_And he apologized over and over until she wanted to punch _him_, and they went out to dinner for more awkward silences, and then back to his place to fall asleep on the couch watching 'History Channel Presents: Hitler's Bunker' again._

_It wasn't a happy day. But it was a them day. A together day. _

_And at this point, that was so much more than enough._

xxxxx

"Eames?"

"Mmm-hmm?"

"Would…pancakes be okay? Tomorrow?"

"As long as you're the one making them. Bobby?"

"Mmm?"

"Let's go to my house tomorrow night."


	5. Chapter 5

**On the Megabus, which an aggrieved Carver has been forced to turn around back towards NYC:**

**Eames: So this online interview makes it sound like you'll be less angsty this season…**

**Goren: Ha! Fat chance. Did you see the promo? It was all "Goren takes a case personally" in a deep dramatic voice-over and everything!**

**Eames: You *always* take it personally.**

**Goren: It said there was a dark secret!**

**Eames: There's *always* a dark secret.**

**Goren: **_**(pouts) **_**I was shouting at somebody.**

**Eames: Robert O. Goren, name one interrogation in your entire career where you have *not* raised your voice.**

**Goren: But…but what am I supposed to do without my angst? You already have the snark angle covered.**

**Eames: I guess you'll just have to fall back on your other personality trait of being an incredible nerd.**

**Goren: Well, at least my fallback trait isn't making incredibly lame puns.**

**Eames: YOU DID NOT JUST DISRESPECT MY PUNS.**

**Carver: **_**(winces) **_**Not a wise decision, Goren.**

**Goren: What do you know?**

**Carver: How do you think I lost my job?**

**A.N. So I made it my goal to finish both my multi-chapter works before the season premiere. Never before have the words "not gonna happen" been so inadequate.**

He doesn't bring wine and she doesn't take any out, but he's drunk on her, on the way she raises her eyebrows at his stammering and the way the kitchen lights light up her hair like cornsilk and her eyes like spiced mead and the way she takes out the footstool to reach her cupboards without even _thinking _of asking for any help and the way she moves through the space, owning it, making it a part of her.

"What do you want to drink?" she asks, hopping off the stool with two cups in her hands.

"Uh…water's fine."

"Living on the edge," she says, and he soaks up the flicker of light she casts with her smirk.

She's at the sink, and without even thinking he steps in closer, inhales through his nose. She smells a little like the Chinese food on the table and a little like burnt tomato sauce—_"Don't even _think _about laughing at my Martha Stewart attempt," she'd warned when she answered the door—_and underneath all that she smells like all the perfect little smells that make her Eames. Alex.

She turns and jumps a little to find him so close. "Jesus, Bobby!" Her fingers almost slip on the glasses. There's barely two inches of air between them.

_She looks flustered,_ he thinks. He tilts his head.

She smiles.

"Do you have a vase?" he asks, because he's just remembered he brought flowers.

Her mouth hangs slightly open for a moment, and then she's smiling again, but different, and he thinks maybe he missed something, because there's a feeling in him like an ending, a closing-off, and he doesn't know what it is but it scares him a little.

"There's a few under the sink."

"Okay."

She's wearing a light blue blouse buttoned up all of the way to the top. She owns a tank top that exact shade, and he remembers the little glance and smile she gave him once when she was wearing it: knowing, amused, a little proprietary.

He remembers how it gave him a dizzy singing feeling in his stomach. And warmth down to his toes.

"Uh, Bobby? You have to let me get out of the way if you want to get to the vases."

He steps back hastily, and yup, this is reality, cold sober reality where his feet are too big and clumsy not to trip over and his frame is too big and clumsy to scrunch into Eames' kitchen and he is too big and clumsy to fit into Eames' life and she was just being nice, damnit, and what the hell was he thinking barely two seconds ago when he managed to daydream an entire life where it was okay for him to be thinking about Eames' tank tops and what was beneath Eames' tank tops and the way she smiled at him and the way she kissed all of his face except his lips on the first night and maybe someday asking her to kiss his lips too?

She was just trying to look out for him. Just being a good partner.

_Don't see what isn't there. Don't see what isn't there. Don't--_

He takes entirely too long to find a vase because all of a sudden he has this ridiculous urge to cry and he knows it will show on his face and then she will want to know why and he can't tell her. It's not like there's a vast selection, but he finally settles on a long thin study in green crystal, with a design of flowers and bunching grapes.

"My favorite," she says behind him, and it startles him so much his head snaps up and he brains himself on edge of the counter. Knocks him flat on his ass.

"Bobby!" And she's kneeling down next to him and her hands are running through his hair and he is never going to get tired of the way her hands feel on him and he isn't sure he can survive when they're back at work and—

He kisses her.

He has to sort of lunge up to do it, because he's still sitting and her face is too far away to just lean over, so he lunges as she makes this little startled sound and then his lips land on hers. And for exactly one point three seconds, it's heaven, her lips softsoftsoftsoft like he remembers them and warm and right and tasting a little like coffee but mostly like Alex, AlexAlexAlex—

And then she jerks away, stunned and staring, and he loses his balance, throws out his left hand to steady himself, forgetting that that's the one holding the vase, and—

--crash—

--and _oh shit, her favorite_—

--and Alex's eyes are wide and Bobby's eyes are wide and some things are irreparable and the whole world goes into slow motion as the green vase smashes into the linoleum, cracking and crumbling and shattering into tiny jagged pieces.

**A.N. One more chapter to go! Oh, the dilemma…to give in to my shippy leanings and have Bobby and Alex fall into each others' arms and live happily ever after, or to crush their carefully repaired friendship into fine powder and snort it up my nose like the evil angst junkie I am?**

**Decisions, decisions.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Goren: You really think she's going to stop after this?**

**Eames: Well, she still has another multi-chapter fic to finish, but with any luck she'll be too busy with her fellowship to post any of her one-shots.**

**Goren: We can but hope, anyway.**

**Eames: Well, I can hope. I'm not really sure you're capable of hope anymore.**

**Goren: Hey, didn't you see me smile at the picture of my niece in 'Faithfully?' That was totally hope!**

**Eames: Or else that was just—wait, how did our three episodes air while we're still on this bus?**

**Carver: Less pointing out this author's glaringly obvious plot holes, more playful banter.**

**Eames: Bite me.**

**A.N. I'm feeling kind of meh about this, but I figured I should post before I just put it off for all eternity. Remember, reviews of any kind are the sparkling drops of joy that temporarily refresh the scorched and barren desert of my soul! (Flames are the vultures: threatening and ominous at first glance, but surprisingly amusing once you actually take a good look at them.)**

You never get used to having a gun pointed at you.

You'd think you would if you were a soldier, were a cop, had had a gun jammed in your face three, four, five times a year. You'd think.

It never does. It's new each time. Even as that sickening heavy familiarity, cold and heavy, slides spreads up down out from your spine, seeps into every pore, even as you think _oh shit shoulda seen this coming I shoulda seen _even then you feel the newness, like bright white electricity, like a wobbling uncertainty in the air. Like a hairline fracture in the suddenly less-than-solid surface beneath you—because everything is uncertain right now, from the next move of that jittering finger stroking the trigger to that great big lungful of breath you're planning on sucking in half a second from now, a million million ways this could go right now and you're hovering balancing (oh God tipping) right on the crossroads. And the only thing that isn't uncertain in this world, this new brand-new brand-spanking-fucking-_new_ world, the only thing that's solid and real as unchanging as a monolith, is that fucking gun, that great big fucking gun that's swelled to fill all of your vision, that barrel long and black and smooth and so very very heavy with the power of life and death decided in an instant that your eyes feel the weight just watching it. And maybe other things are moving, happening, all around you, but you have to keep your eyes glued to that gun, glued to that long smooth black barrel with the hole on the end even blacker and seemingly endless and if you stopped to think about it (yeah fucking _right_) you'd know it only holds small pieces of metal but right now you _know_ it holds eternity.

xxxxx

Eames' eyes, right now, are a gun. He feels the heat of them, the barrel trained on him. But he can't look. He knows he should look. Diffuse the situation. Profile the shooter, talk her down. But he can't, because he is frozen and she is going to pull the trigger and Eames never misses.

--she's going to hate him now, she's going to hate him so much and he almost hopes she does because he deserves it and hate is better than fear and Eames isn't supposed to be afraid of anything at all but especially not her partner, she's supposed to be able to trust her partner, she's supposed to be able to trust him—

But it's quiet for a long time. And the slap, the shouts, don't come. So he looks up. Not quite to her eyes.

(Coward)

She's just looking at him, her face unreadable. Her right hand touching her lips.

_(her lips always tug down slightly at the corners like the whole world's making her frown, until she smiles, and it's like an explosion of light that makes you forget she ever knew how to be sad)_

The world is frozen and flat and two-dimensional and just barely balancing on the edge of something, and he is not even breathing because he knows that one breath could be all the movement needed to send the bullet slamming down that long black barrel and into the end of everything.

Then she's standing. "You're bleeding, let me get a towel."

Her voice is so normal that it takes him a second to process the words. He looks down. Oh, right. Blood. From the glass.

"But it'll stain—" he's trying for normal too, if this is the path they're going to take. The one that keeps Eames from leaving.

"Don't be an idiot." She pulls a blue kitchen towel from the drawer, grabs at his arm clumsily, hauls him to his feet. She's not looking at his face anymore.

She yanks him to the sink (still not looking at him, _why won't you look at me Eames please please look at me I'm sorry_), and her movements are curt and decisive and impersonal. She sticks his hand under the sink and he lets out a low hiss as the cold water hits his palm and her pretty little fingers stroke along its creases, checking for slivers and shards and shedding little sparks of electricity into his skin as they go.

"I'm sorry," he blurts, and it's louder than he intended, and Eames jumps a little, and he gets one unintentional glimpse of her wide startled (frightened?) eyes before she ducks her head again.

"Don't worry about it. It's just a vase." She lets go. "There's a first aid kit under the bathroom sink when you're finished. I'll get the broom and the dustpan."

xxxxx

Eames sweeps up the shards of glass. The little pieces glitter in the fluorescent light like emeralds.

She remembers the scarfs—green red yellow pink purple—that Bobby magicked into the air for her to try to get her to smile.

She remembers the bottom falling out of the world as she looked down the barrel of her gun at Bobby, as he looked down the barrel of his gun at her.

How warm his lips were, just now, when he kissed her.

How cold all the air around her had gone when she realized what he'd done, when he'd said, "Is now okay?"

xxxxx

The first aid kit is beneath a dusty bulk package of Irish Spring. He dabs on the disinfectant. Chooses a band-aid large enough to wrap around his palm so it won't sweat off.

On the bathroom counter there's a pink razor and a blue toothbrush and a bar of oatmeal hand soap from the last hotel he and Eames stayed at, and they're all doing perfectly fine without him.

There's an eyelash stuck to the mirror and he thinks of doing something stupid and junior high like picking it up and sticking in his pocket, but when he tries it flutters off his finger and disappears and he can't find it no matter how hard he looks.

xxxxx

Emerald. Beryl. Malachite.

She rolls a shard of glass between her index finger and her thumb, studying the way it catches the light.

Tourmaline.

The case where she almost cut him loose, the jewelry store. Double homicide. God, he wouldn't shut up. Wouldn't pay attention. The things he said, to suspects, to witnesses--

Jade. Peridot.

To her—

Chrysoprase. Jasper. Zircon. Aventine.

The look in his eyes five years later when the lawyer pulled her words out of the past and up through her mouth: _serious doubts about his judgment and mental stability—_

Bloodstone.

xxxxx

Bobby very nearly decides to lock the bathroom door and barricade it against people who worm their way into your heart and mess up your head and make you think and feel all these crazy stupid things, who without even trying knock down all your walls that you spent _ages_ making unscalable, impregnable, because you need _shelter_, because the world is filled with sharp edges and corners and it hurts you and it hurts you and it hurts you--

People who basically just fucking _exist_, all right, exist in tiny beautiful snarky little blonde five-foot-two packages of perfection that you're not allowed to touch, not the way you want to—

_Need_ to—

When he does open the door Eames is standing right there. He jumps a little, and a ghost of a smile flits around her lips.

"Hey," he says, to be saying something, anything.

"Hey," she says back, and the smile's a little stronger this time.

She takes his left hand and examines the bandage like there's going to be a test and oh God she needs to stop right now and oh God please don't ever stop.

"Remember Locke Jewelry?" she says suddenly.

"Double homicide. Almost…triple." He ducks his head a little. Her feet are bare and tiny and perfect against the light blue carpet.

"Yeah, if you had gone on much longer about the mineralogical differences between color-change garnets and the normal kind…" She's amused, remembering, but there's a hint of something else in her voice, shape-shifting its way between tone and pitch.

Is she nervous? Disgusted? Afraid?

She leans forward suddenly, taking his other hand in hers and pressing her forehead to his chest. "I trust you, Bobby." It's a whisper but it's fierce, words like spears. "Believe me, okay? Believe me."

"I…" He wants to say he does, he wants to so much, but he can't tell if he does because his body is being crushed and turned inside out with how good this feels and how much it hurts all at the same time. _I will never ever hurt you I promise I will never do anything to hurt you ever again Eames and I will be here for you and be what you need whatever you need even if it's not what I want I promise I promise I promise—_"I'm trying."

She nods against his chest. "Okay." She plants a kiss on his shirt. Can she feel how his heart speeds up? She pulls away, still holding his hands. Tugs.

"Let's go to bed."

**Goren: Wha…? That's where she's ending the story? *There?***

**Carver: Actually, she decided she couldn't fit the whole thing in one chapter after all, so there's still one more to go.**

**Eames: But she kept that first misleading author's note? What a little bitch.**

**Carver: An astute assessment.**

**Goren: So are we having sex next chapter? That was a pretty come-hither line you gave me right there.**

**Eames: Well, it sounds like it. God, I hope not. She's only written two sex scenes before, and they weren't *nearly* a chapter long.**

**Goren: Aren't you forgetting the time you got raped?**

**Eames: Oh, right. Thanks so much for reminding me.**

**Carver: Perhaps she is being purposefully misleading in order to better traumatize her readers when she brings forth the friendship-crushing sorrow next chapter.**

**Goren: If that were the case, wouldn't it have been better for you not to say anything?**

**Carver: Some sort of disclaimer is only polite. Those venturing on to the next chapter should be warned that it will contain either poorly written M-rated smut or ridiculously overblown angst. Though I can't imagine any of your fans aren't used to ridiculously overblown angst yet.**

**Goren: Actually, the two options aren't mutually exclusive. **

**Eames: How so?**

**Goren: Maybe we'll have sex and that'll be the plot device she uses to crush all our happiness and leave us drowning in despair.**

**Eames: …you *really* need to work on your pick-up lines.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Carver: Well, here we are. The last chapter. Also, metaphorically, New York City.**

**Goren: (sighs) Well, at least this nightmare'll be over soon.**

**Eames: (deep breath) I don't know which scares me more: the possibility of me hating you, or the possibility of you kissing me with tongue.**

**Goren: Hold my hand till we get past the overwrought clichés?**

**Eames: What the—Goren, are you hitting on me?!**

**Goren: What? No! God no! I meant that in a completely chaste, platonic, and nonsexual way!**

**Eames: Oh. Well, alright then.**

**(they hold hands)**

**Carver: Awww…**

**Eames: A, that's completely out of character for you, and B, shut up or die.**

He feels more than actually sees her hesitate at the foot of the bed before she slips in, fully clothed, curling away from him. And he tries to tell himself that it's good that the barriers are going back up because barriers he knows how to navigate, barriers are normal, but most of him is struggling to breathe against the hard fast punch to his lungs, the explosion of his heart slamming against his ribcage, a thousand shards, broken heart, and he's always hated clichés but it's just so fucking _true_.

He pulls off his shoes and slides in after her, but the air is heavy and full of things he doesn't understand, and he lets his hand fall a few inches from her shoulder instead of on it or around her waist.

Close enough to feel the heat off her skin.

Far away enough to feel like the Grand Canyon's been transplanted into the middle of the bed, a vast and echoing chasm amid the crinkled sheets and Blue Light Special blankets.

God, if he could just see her _face_.

"Eames?" he whispers. "I—I promise I won't…try anything."

She sucks in a sharp breath, disrupting the steady rising, falling rhythm. Reaches blindly behind herself until she finds his hand and squeezes it tight, pulls him to her back.

Puts his hand on her breast.

And holyfuckinghell his heart can't have broken after all because it's going a million miles a minute (so is hers) faster faster faster jackhammering out through his chest going to explode all over again _ka-thunk ka-thunk_ this is completely impossible and she breathes and her breast presses firm into his palm and he is aching needing hard and dizzy falling his heart his heart is_ kathunkkathunkkathunkka—_

"Eames? Wh—"

Her hand comes up against his mouth, glancing a little off his cheek because she's still not looking to aim, and then she presses her finger against his lips in a shushing motion. He quiets.

He breathes, feeling the air bounce off her skin and back onto his lips.

Her fingertips trail down his cheek to his neck, and then his shoulder, follow a winding path down his arm to his hand (oh_God_) which she slides up, up, up, so slowly, until she hooks it in the front of her blouse collar, pushing his thumb in a slow circle to polish the top button.

She presses down a little harder, and the button pops free.

Oh God.

She tugs his hand down to the next button.

_Oh God._

His fingers move like the neurons firing the commands are half a galaxy away, so slowly, slowly, and beneath the rumble of the traffic outside he hears the tiniest sounds, the minuscule squeak of his fingerprints against the plastic circles, the infinitesimal rustle of the light blue (grey in the dull light of a New York night bedroom) threads in the fabric of her shirt.

The pulse of her blood when his fingers slip and touch, just for an instant, her bare skin.

And his hand, guided by hers, meanders down the front of her blouse till it hangs open, and then she arches forward and he slides it from her, so mesmerized by the rippling of the muscles in her back and shoulders that it takes him a second to realize that his hand is back under hers and skimming down her taut stomach to rest on the zipper of her slacks.

And the clicking as its teeth tease apart echoes in his head, only to be drowned out by Alex's soft gasp as his fingers slip inside her waistband, ease the fabric down over her hips, her thighs, her knees and down down down until they slip past her toes and he is already mourning the fact that she has no socks for him to take off too.

Bobby moves back up, holding her loosely as he tucks his nose into the crook of her neck, breathes in. His eyes are wet."Thank you."

She takes his hand again, and puts in on the clasp of her bra.

Holy shit.

Air and time and the laws of physics are not happening right now.

At all.

"Eames—Eames, are you sure—"

"Shh…"

And his fingers are moving of their own accord, unhooking the clasp, and he can feel the cotton beneath his fingertips but it's all happening light-years away from any universe he knows and thank God she had to pull away a little for him to do this because otherwise there would be no way she could ignore how fucking hard he is for her right now, blood like lava boiling and shoving against his veins wanting to make him explode, a fireball bursting through his skin and consuming the entire bed, blowing off the roof—

And the fabric slides off and how beautiful she looks sandblasts away any imagery from his brain except the image of her, and she is easing his fingers down to her underwear and for the first time it occurs to him that maybe the reason this feels so unreal is that it's a dream, but then as he's pulling down her plain white briefs there is the tiny intimate rustle of silk against hair and he knows he could never dream a sound so perfect, so real and happening and fucking _sublime_.

She is melting reality with the warmth off her skin, the light glinting off her curves (breasts, hips, legs, lips), she is soft and warm and he is drowning in her just being next to her.

Alex pushes against him, signaling that he should turn around so he does, and she presses against his back (breasts legs lips hips—_ooooh_). He tries not to rock his own hips, because he still doesn't know what's going on, what this is, (a test, a gift, a promise, a beginning, an end?—don't think, just follow) and also because what's happening is hanging to reality by a thread and if he moves then it might snap, and they might fall and fall and never stop falling until they smack! into the hard pavement of the real world. She presses her lips (_softwarmwet_) to his neck, nips at his jaw, trails kisses upwards till she can tug gently at his earlobe with her teeth, snaking out her little tongue and _oh_ she is going to kill him.

He groans low and helpless and her lips curve against his ear before her hands (oh God her hands her tiny strong perfect hands) rub across his chest. As slow as he was but far steadier, she undoes the buttons of his shirt and slides it from his arms, pulls his undershirt over his head. Her hands are hot enough to melt marble and they are slipping, sliding down his stomach and his pants are so fucking tight and just one finger (accidentally?) brushes against his erection and colors burst against his eyelids and he has to bite his lip to keep from moaning again.

His zipper snags but she wrests off the pants, tugs them down and he can feel her breath on the backs of his knees as she struggles with the fabric and eventually has to yank them off his feet. The ordeal either amuses or annoys her, because he hears (feels) a huff of air come out of her mouth, and then her fingers dart forward and mercilessly tickle his soles before peeling away his socks.

Alex slides back up, all bare skin on bare skin except for his boxers which her nimble little fingers are peeling away now, pulling down, and his cock springs up red and ready and throbbing and he can't hold still anymore so he helps her toe them off and then there is nothing, nothingabsolutelynothing between them at all.

She pulls at his shoulder again and he turns around but this time she doesn't turn with him and now, finally, they're facing each other, and her eyes are wide and serious but also smiling, a little, and her hair is messy and she is naked next to him and he has never seen anything so amazing.

She reaches up to cup his cheek, stubble against the smooth skin of her palm, and kisses him. He kisses her back. It's long and leisurely and warm and sure and her hand finds its way between his legs and he gasps into her mouth. He keeps kissing her as she strokes him languorously up and down, moves his own hand down to her coarse curls, stroking her clit and then sliding inside her _(warmwet) _and she squirms, making a pleased thrumming sound in the back of her throat.

"You _purr_," he murmurs when he comes up for air, and he knows he's got a stupid grin on his face and he doesn't care.

"You taste like Chinese food," she whispers, smirking. She closes the distance and her tongue flicks over his lips again, delves into his mouth to dance with his own. He crooks his finger and strokes a little faster inside her and she growls, bites down on his bottom lip as she clenches around his finger and her hand (ohsweetlordholyfuckingshit_) clenches _around him.

She shoves him onto his back, straddles him, kisses him fiercely as she forces his shoulders down and he is lost; he is lost and he is hers.

"Trust you," she says, like a secret, licking and kissing her way from his mouth to his neck to his chest.

"Trust you," he gasps as she finds that spot right beneath his collarbone, as he cups her breasts, presses against her nipples with his thumbs. "Always trusted you, always, never meant to make you think—"

She silences him with another hungry kiss, all tongues and teeth and scorching heat, and then she leans over towards the bedside drawer and fumbles for a condom and he helps her put it on him and their breaths are coming harsh and fast. And then she's moving, and he's guiding her, and she slides down onto him, and—

_Oh god_

So _tight _wet warm tight and her head is thrown back _home _hair thrown back moonlight streetlights through the window glinting off of her glistening skin _I'm home _and they are both holding so perfectly still and it feels _(perfect)_ so good he just might die, but then she starts to move and he knows he's going to die with how tightperfectgoodsogood she feels, and she's moving and he's moving and he can't tell whose moans are whose and it doesn't matter anyway it's Eames (Alex) here with him and he's trying to tell her how (perfect impossible) amazing it is that she's here with him but no words have ever been made for how amazing it is that she's here with him and so he just moans and _feels_ and—

She comes with a short, sharp cry and then a low moan that's almost despairing, and he's right behind her but his vocal cords have stopped working and all that's pulled from his mouth is a drawn out hiss like the breath being stolen from his lungs, and he doesn't ever want this to stop _please time freeze again now forever please…_

And Alex sprawls across his chest and he holds her, so suddenly small (she's always been small but never like this) in his arms, and kisses the top of her head while their legs tangle and her fingers make lazy circles in his chest hair.

xxxxx

"You're thinking loudly again," she mumbles several minutes later into his skin. They still haven't moved, other than to toss the condom in the wastebasket.

He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fiddles with the end. "Just…trying to figure something out."

"Why I look so good naked? Thirty minutes a day at the gym and the secret preservative in Skittles."

"Ah. That explains it."

"Is it work? We can deal with that."

"I know." He squeezes her against him a little, hoping it's not enough that she notices.

She notices.

"Hey, Bobby." She pushes herself up on his chest. "I want to be here, okay? I'm not going to go. I'm staying. I want to be here with you."

"I want to be here with you too," he whispers.

"Good," she says shortly. She flops back down, then thinks better of it and scoots up to kiss him on the cheek before pressing her face into his shoulder. "Because I—I care. About you. A lot." She says it almost defiantly, like she's expecting him to disagree. "I care—for you."

"I c-care about—for, you too. A lot. For a…a long time." And he's glad she can't look at him right now, because his stupid fucking eyes are all wet again.

"'Kay. Good." She loops her arms around his neck and snuggles closer against him. A long pause, and then, very softly, "Love you."

He nudges her head to the side just enough that he can plant a kiss on her nose. "Love you too."

xxxxx

They're late for their first day back at work, but Ross tells them he understands and hands over a casefile.

Sometimes when things are broken, they get put back together in different shapes.

And sometimes that's okay.

**A.N. Yeah, I went with a happy ending. Don't get used to it. :)**


End file.
